Buy-to-Order

Outcome

A purchase order and a customer order are created during customer order entry without disrupting the customer order flow.

Throughout the process, it is possible to monitor the customer order/purchase order and, if necessary, recalculate price or change delivery terms.

Before you start

The starting conditions listed in Creating a Purchase Order in the Customer Order Flow must be met.

Purpose

The purpose of the buy-to-order function is to facilitate the procurement process during customer order entry by creating a purchase order in the customer order flow without disrupting the normal order entry.

When

Use the buy-to-order function when you need to buy an item that you do not keep in stock. For example, buy-to-order is applicable when a supplier takes on the role of an agent or cross-docking pool for deliveries to a certain customer. This means that goods will go directly to the customer or only shortly remain in stock while cross docking with in-house goods. This function can be used both for normal items and for extended catalog items.

How

The settings for the buy-to-order function facilitate the creation of a purchase order while entering a customer order. A closer link is created between customer orders and purchase orders either through 'Customer Order. Acquire Sales Item' (OIS145), which starts automatically during order entry in 'Customer Order. Open' (OIS100) and 'Customer Order. Open Lines' (OIS101) or via settings that process procurement automatically.

You can use these two ways to manage buy-to-order:

• 'Customer Order. Acquire Sales Item' (OIS145) is started automatically during order line entry. Here you can add or change the information about an item and, if necessary, recalculate sales price. By pressing F17=Update, you will return to the customer order line, and a purchase order is created automatically.
• A planned purchase order is created and released directly after entering the customer order line without starting (OIS145). A message informs you that a purchase order is created automatically.

The buy-to-order process manages both normal items and extended catalog items (ECI). Both are stored in the item file. ECIs are template items, used to reduce the maintenance of basic data for seldom sold items and to facilitate the process of creating a new item to be purchased. These items are predefined and will be treated as ordinary in-house items in M3.

Structure

This figure illustrates the buy-to-order flow as well as which files are updated.